How can you spice up your general ideas with the stuff of real life? How can you tug your readers deeper and deeper into your essays until they say, “I see just what you mean”? Well-developed essays have such power because they back up general points with evidence that comes alive for readers. This chapter covers nine indispensable methods of development — giving examples, providing details, defining, reasoning inductively and deductively, analyzing a subject, analyzing a process, dividing and classifying, comparing and contrasting, and identifying causes and effects. A strong essay almost always requires a combination of strategies.

Whenever you develop or revise a piece of writing, you face a challenge: How do you figure out what to do? Sometimes you may suspect that you’ve wandered into the buffet line at the Writer’s Grill. You watch others load their plates, but still you hesitate. What will taste best? How much will fit on your plate? What will create a memorable experience? For you as a writer, the answers to such questions are individual, depending on your situation, the clarity of your main idea or thesis, and the state of your draft.